A SPRING RELISH 125 



has done tells, especially what he has done well. 

 Our interest centers in the farmhouses and in the 

 influence that seems to radiate from there. The 

 older the home, the more genial nature looks about 

 it. The new architectural place of the rich citizen, 

 with the barns and outbuildings concealed or dis- 

 guised as much as possible spring is in no hurry 

 about it; the sweat of long years of honest labor 

 has not yet fattened the soil it stands upon. 



The full charm of this April landscape is not 

 brought out till the afternoon. It seems to need the 

 slanting rays of the evening sun to give it the right 

 mellowness and tenderness, or the right perspective. 

 It is, perhaps, a little too bald in the strong, white 

 light of the earlier part of the day, but when the faint, 

 four o'clock shadows begin to come out and we look 

 through the green vistas, and along the farm lanes 

 toward the west, or out across long stretches of fields 

 above which spring seems fairly hovering, just ready 

 to alight, and note the teams slowly plowing, the 

 brightened moldboard gleaming in the sun now and 

 then it is at such times we feel its fresh, delicate 

 attraction the most. There is no foliage on the trees 

 yet; only here and there the red bloom of the soft 

 maple, illuminated by the declining sun, shows 

 vividly against the tender green of a slope beyond, 

 or a willow, like a thin veil, stands out against a 

 leafless wood. Here and there a little meadow water- 

 course is golden with marsh marigolds, or some 



